Ben Egerton

July 13, 2018Poetry Ed

Ben Egerton is from Wellington. Currently a PhD candidate at the IIML at Victoria University, his interests lie in the intersection of contemporary Christian poetry and ecological stewardship. Ben’s dog thinks that he’s a very fine thrower of tennis balls.

Victoria Land

In my first years of the Antarctic work I spent three summers and a winter ‘down south’ of the first years of our marriage. I used to say, “I gave the best years of my wife to the Antarctic.”– Dr Bernie Gunn

And each night I’d yearnfor her dot of colour.By kerosene flame

sun-yellow, scribblingsmoky patternson the prefabricated walls

I worked. Hunkeredin the empty quietjotting

in the ice-free marginson the notebooks open in strataon the desk.

I didn’t choose Antarcticait was given to me.An assignment at the limits

of my capabilities –eighty-six thousandsquare kilometres

and five monthsof hard copy.And later, suspended

in the dimming,I’d drift offto the greens and browns

of our orchardin the scent of late springwhere you in your apple-red dress

lay face upexpectancy bronzedonto your warm cheeks.

GATHERING NEW CARTOGRAPHIC INFORMATION FOR THE REVISED EDITION

It is one thing to draw a map at random, set a scale in one corner of it and write up a story to the measurements. It is quite another to have to examine a whole book, make an inventory of all the allusions contained within it, and, with a pair of compasses, painfully design a map to suit the data.

– Robert Louis Stevenson

America, on the bar wall, measuresabout two feet by three feet and is empty

in the middle, and surrounded by sea.Mexico and Canada have vanished,

along with problems of walls or porous borders.Alaska is a small island, slowly towed

several thousand miles south, thawingoff the California coast.

The oceans are a flat cobalt calm washingto a light-lined shore – though there’s little

by way of coastal infrastructure,no provision for high tides or storm surges

and, should a large wave sweep the country,no safety on higher ground.

We try to fill in the blanks, suggestwhere to situate the major cities, conjure

significant geographical features with our fingers.From nothing we build highways and state lines,

irrigate vast swathes of land for wheat, grapesand cattle, erase faults and anticipate

areas of heavy rainfall. Like pioneerswe plot our future, not thinking who

or what our map betrays as it takes shape.For a moment our America is alive, glowing

with permanence, but we can’t makeour landmarks stick, always one glance away

from a blank sheet and broken promises:a white flag adrift in blue-ringed quiet